Christopher Theofanidis’ music has been performed by many of the world’s leading performing arts organizations, from the London Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic to the San Francisco Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and the American Ballet Theatre. He is a two-time Grammy nominee for best composition, and his Viola Concerto, recorded with David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony with Richard O’Neill soloist, won the 2021 Grammy for Best Instrumental Solo. Mr. Theofanidis’ work, Rainbow Body, is one of the most performed works in recent decades, having been performed by over 200 orchestras worldwide. Mr. Theofanidis is currently on the faculties of Yale University and the Aspen Music Festival, and has taught at the Juilliard School and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University.
AF: Tell us about a moment or a few moments when you, as a young composer, had an epiphany, or a crisis, or an experience that has really shaped you.
CT: I immediately remember my very first lesson with Samuel Adler [distinguished American composer] as a graduate student at Eastman. I had brought in a new work for Pierrot ensemble [the grouping Arnold Schoenberg used for his seminal work with soprano: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano]. It opened with a lyrical melodic line. Sam said, “No, no, no! Don’t give everything away so quickly! When this lovely idea comes, it has to feel like the most inevitable thing in the world. Setting it up is everything! Now go compose backward from this moment of melody so it actually becomes important.” This idea, that music reveals itself with patience, through layering and iteration, became central to me. Another moment that has always stuck with me was hearing Martin Bresnick, who is now my colleague, say that writing a concerto is like lighting design – one is always deciding how much light to shine on the soloist. It’s a great thing to be aware of in writing for anyone: how to create the perfect illumination and focus.
AF: How do your own experiences as a young composer shape the program you’ve done so much to develop here in Aspen?
CT: Well first, one needs to approach teaching with a great humility—you’re only a part of a young composers’ experience, not the center of it; education is an ecosystem in the end, and you are only a step along the student’s life path, the most important journey. To that end, we try very hard to choose composer-fellows who will inspire each other in different ways, because they will ultimately teach each other as much as the faculty will, and moreover they will continue to teach each other for years to come. And it’s so wonderful to see these connections continue after Aspen. The students always form a group chat after leaving here (to which I am rightly not invited!)
AF: What about the actual teaching?
CT: I always say a teacher is part psychologist, part technician, and part cheerleader. One of the most useful things you can do as a teacher I think is to tell a student the way you as one person perceive something—because they are often so in the weeds, they have a kind of skewed sense of the way something is coming across beyond themselves. And I like the Socratic method for this—asking questions—‘what are you trying to do here, what is your priority; it seems you really care about…’—this can reveal a lot to a student, things that they can then see then for themselves.
AF: My teacher, Roger Sessions, had a similar practice. I can remember his voice saying, “I think you want this music to be like this….” Tell us about working with musicians and developing an affinity for them, with them.
CT: Well, writing a piece for someone specific is like making a perfectly tailored suit. The more you know someone, the more the piece ‘fits’ and the more joy there is in the work. For me, my relationship with Robert Spano is the pinnacle of this. Through 26 years, we’ve come to a point where I can tell him things, and he can tell me things, all in the most substantial and open way, and it really counts for something, and it changes the art. It’s wonderful to be both confidant and collaborator. Robert [Spano] is always thinking of the mystery of time, the way time leavens things. I’ve written works with him that are three minutes and works that are two hours. And our conversation goes way beyond the thing itself. He has a fundamental willingness to be out on a limb practically and conceptually, something I value very much. This extends to many non-musical things as well—we can actually binge-watch a TV series, or we can be studying videos of Carl Jung together, and it’s all as vital and fantastic as a Mahler symphony!
AF: Tell us about the genesis of your work Siddhartha, She, which we present August 2nd.
CT: I have always had a curiosity about the spiritual dimension of life. I have three works inspired by Hildegard of Bingen, a large work based on writings of Rumi, and many other works dealing with matters of the spirit. From the time I first encountered the Hesse novel, Siddhartha, back in high school, through the early 2000s when I started to think about a musical work around this subject, I was deeply attracted to the central theme of the work—that nobody can tell you how to be yourself; you must awaken from within and act on that call in yourself. And that is actually both the spiritual and artistic journey.
AF: That’s an apt link to your ideas about music teaching and learning!
CT: Yes! Siddhartha follows a pathway from the conditions of her birth and family [in the musical work, Siddhartha is female] to a state of understanding about who she is, and how she is a part of the great eternal “Om,” the fusion of all things. Years later, in 2005, the wonderful conductor Patrick Summers sent me the novel Siddhartha to consider as an opera, and it made me recall my initial passion for the work. Robert then told me, “You have to write that piece!” And even then, it took all these years.
AF: I think a stay at the Hermitage [artist colony near Sarasota, Florida] brought everything and everyone together.
CT: Yes, indeed. That place has changed my life forever. With the greatest generosity, the Hermitage lets us nominate a young composer from each summer’s composition class at Aspen to spend time there, and they offered me this same gift of time. I was there the first time for six weeks, and of course, things impact us entirely according to their timing… and what timing! Among others, I was in a small group with Melissa Studdard, and her poetry and humanity were exactly the thing I had needed at that moment. As Siddhartha says in our work, “An explosion of color!” Then the pandemic came. She and I were both in Houston during that period and became creative partners in a pod first, and then eventually, life partners. Also at that initial Hermitage stay, was another future Siddhartha, She collaborator—Anne Patterson. Anne and I had intersected several decades earlier, in a Brooklyn Academy of Music project from 2001 – a project also involving Robert and Ed Berkeley, the beloved Aspen Opera director. The Hermitage brought us back into connection. She and Robert had stayed connected over the years, and I learned that she, separately, had done significant design work in Aspen with Ed. Also at the Hermitage was another future collaborator on this work, the composer Patrick Harlin, who Steven Stucky had spoken of enthusiastically to me [Patrick Harlin won the first-ever Hermitage Prize in Aspen]. Patrick told us about his environmental field recording work, and we all immediately knew that the four of us (Melissa, Anne, Patrick, and myself) had found in each other the ideal creative team for this project. Robert and Melissa gave the work its sub-title: “A ritual music drama in seven tableaux,” and I think the sense of ritual that is in it is truly part of that original communal Hermitage experience we shared. One gathers to watch the sun set across the Gulf each evening, drink a glass of wine, and talk deep into the night, and sometimes those conversations transformed you. Our work hopefully has that quality of ritual and connection.
AF: How does Patrick Harlin’s sound design come into the work?
CT: The work overall allows space for contemplation; it’s about things that make you reflect—the sound of water, of a river, of heartbeats. Through Patrick’s contribution, you feel enveloped in sound throughout the work in the hall. Anne’s installations also do this: there will be art along the pathways leading into the tent that prefigure the space of the musical work, and art within the tent that expands the performance space as well. And fifteen minutes before the work begins on stage, there will be sound in the tent, heightening your senses, creating an immersive, ceremonial dimension.
AF: To close, can you tell us a favorite Aspen experience or ritual you have?
CT: Every summer, I take a group of students all the way up to Ashcroft, at midnight, when there’s no moon, to see the night sky. It’s marvelous and moving that many people have never really seen this. You breathe deep; you don’t let your mind race. It’s immense, beautiful, vivid. We go back later in the summer to see the Perseid meteor shower. It’s a gift of wonder to see a star shooting across the sky. It’s all so beautiful.
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